Microsoft Self-Audit Letter
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@NetworkNerd said:
@thanksaj said:
@NetworkNerd said:
A.J. was correct above that I received the same letter requesting the self audit. If I recall correctly, you have to get an officer of the company to sign the letter to say you are compliant and send it off to someone at Microsoft in order to confirm you either were compliant or have put things in place to get that way (orders of more licenses).
Also, it specifically mentioned open license agreements and not retail or OEM licenses. I'm not saying not to check those, but I think you can see where I am going with this.
I must not have the spreadsheet everyone mentions here. It does not help that this hit at the same time as our ERP system upgrade (Epicor - doing it over Thanksgiving).
My MS letter said we have 30 days to get that signed paper back to a MS rep.
Don't you love having 18 bajillion things to do at the same time though?
That seems to be a consistent theme lately.
Lol I know the feeling...
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So How do you go about Self Audit? What are the things that you audit ? Hopefully you have a easy way to do it.
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@dashokkumar said:
So How do you go about Self Audit? What are the things that you audit ? Hopefully you have a easy way to do it.
Well, if I understand the letter correctly, it is mainly aimed at Volume Licenses and things like server and CAL compliance. I went ahead and did an audit of our workstations and Office as well. We are in pretty good shape. They purchased SQL long before I got here and I cannot verify the license or CAL's on it, so may have to end up purchasing licenses there.
I just hate to sign over a legal document, feel good about it but get fined on a real audit due to "ignorance" of the agreements. So trying to get a good understanding of EVERY license. I've requested an MLS from a vendor but they said Microsoft's' site for that has been down and they can't get it to me yet.
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For those clients who got the letter, were there any that were way out of compliance and did not realize it? I was wondering how the the client reacted to that kind of thing.
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We had one REALLY out of compliance. They just had to get their licenses in order and prove that they had them ordered in their letter. Not a huge deal at all (however this client had to spend like $30K quickly).
The other had to buy a couple licenses and get caught up. Not bad at all.
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@Minion-Queen said:
We have one out of compliance. They just had to get their licenses in order and prove that they had them ordered in their letter. Not a huge deal at all (however this client had to spend like $30K quickly).
I'm still awaiting a MLS before I order SQL licenses...
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@Minion-Queen said:
We had one REALLY out of compliance. They just had to get their licenses in order and prove that they had them ordered in their letter. Not a huge deal at all (however this client had to spend like $30K quickly).
The other had to buy a couple licenses and get caught up. Not bad at all.
Wow - and you only have about 30 days to place those orders. I'm sure management was thrilled with that expenditure.
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Yeah the IT Admin there must have heard about that one. We were brought in for this project and I am glad we could help them. But I am sure the discussion with his boss wasn't a pleasant one.
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@Minion-Queen said:
Yeah the IT Admin there must have heard about that one. We were brought in for this project and I am glad we could help them. But I am sure the discussion with his boss wasn't a pleasant one.
I don't see that as being a pleasant experience either.
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In some places I've worked it's been the owner that is a bit too casual with licences. I've often come in and had to persuade them that being "mostly licenced" isn't really acceptable.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
In some places I've worked it's been the owner that is a bit too casual with licences. I've often come in and had to persuade them that being "mostly licenced" isn't really acceptable.
That's a natural problem with owners. An owner gets the "it's my money" feeling about licenses and sees them as him spending his own income on things he can't tangibly hold. Managers don't normally have this problem because they don't have the same sense of loss - the money that they spend is the business' money and the licenses are just a cost of doing business. No reason for an honest manager to have any qualms with paying for what is used. But owners get emotional.
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I got an MLS...no SQL license to be found and no way to prove it...all we have is a SQL 2008 R2 for Workgroups with 5 user CALS. If I got a core license and downgraded to 2008 R2, can that still apply for the WORKGROUP version of SQL or do I need to purchase a new copy of SQL?
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@JaredBusch said:
I had this at one client back in March.
We had already performed our own internal audit and new that we needed some office licensing (10 licenses off 2013 Standard). We were going to purchase them over 3 months to spread out the impact on the numbers to cross two fiscal quarters. That ended up not happening.
I found nothing else wrong during the audit other than some misapplied keys. Was quite pleased to not have any surprises.
In the case of misapplied keys, it's certainly something that needs to be resolved, but you're still compliant in terms of having the licenses you need to license all MS products for the company as long as you purchased everything needed to cover your bases, right? What I mean to say is...if you had not applied the right keys before confirming compliance and then MS found out you had misapplied keys, would that be a fine?
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Thanks for all of the advice...we found that we needed some licenses and we purchased them and are about to send in the letter.
Thanks...
Brian
